Stolen baby case: Suspecting inside job, ACE takes over investigation

The baby was stolen by a woman posing as a nurse.

RAWALPINDI:

The Rawalpindi Anti Corruption Establishment (ACE) has taken over investigations in the theft case of a newborn baby from Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH) in a bid to determine if any hospital staff was involved.

ACE Rawalpindi Director Muhammad Khan Ranjha confirmed to The Express Tribune that ACE had taken over the investigation into the theft of a baby case, that took place at the BBH gynaecology ward on September 10.

Ranjha said the investigation had been taken over from the police to look into possibility of the theft being facilitated by hospital staff.

On the other hand, a three-member committee established by BBH Medical Superintendent Dr Asif Qadir Mir has already found the duty staff guilty of negligence but cleared them of any direct involvement in the theft.

A BBH administration official told The Express Tribune that the committee report — which was submitted to the MS last week — suggested that three low-rank hospital staffers who are already in jail for entering false data in the routine register were the ones accused of negligence.

The committee had further said that the duty staff and nurses had shown negligence regarding the entries and paying attention to the whereabouts of a newborn child in their care, but there was no concrete proof of them being directly involved.

Though the stolen baby’s mother, Aqsa Bibi, 19, had recognised the face of a woman who was posing as a nurse and took away her child ‘for vaccination’ using footage from the hospital’s CCTV cameras, the address the accused woman had provided in entry register was found to be wrong.

The false entry by the woman left the Waris Khan police running in circles as they tried to locate her in Abbottabad at the address mentioned.

Muhammad Mehrban, the baby’s father, said the child was taken around midnight on September 10, when a middle-aged woman came to his wife Aqsa and took away the baby, saying he needed some vaccinations. She never returned, he said.

CCTV footage clearly showed the woman who Bibi identified as the fake nurse. The woman had been admitted in the same ward as Bibi under a false address.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2012.